Writing tool for MacOs, or for Windows-a question.

Posted by Mitchell Kastner
Aug 1, 2010 at 11:15 PM

It depends upon what type of writing you are going to do.

If you need to include citations and a bibliography, then I strongly suggest you try the relational database Brilliant: http://www.brilliantdatabase.com. Brilliant allows you to create folders into which you can store note records created from your research of technical or academic journals and books. Just like in Windows Explorer, Brilliant allows you to nest many levels of subfolders and to move, copy, demote, and promote the folders just as you would in Windows Explorer. (This involves more dragging and dropping than I am used to in the outliner software I use.) Relating tables, called forms in Brilliant, is a snap. There is a one-to-many relationship between the Articles table I created an the Research Notes table I created. Ditto for the relationship between the Books table and the Research Notes table. There is a many to many relationship between the Authors table and the Articles and Books table since one author can write many books and articles and since one article or book can have many authors. The key difference between Brilliant and every single other relational database manager are the folders which I use as levels in an outline. Each folder is a topic and I can drill down to as many subfolders/subtopics as I wish.

Mitchell Kastner, Esq.